August 26, 2023

I used to tease my grandmother about the Duke and Duchess of Windsor

50 years after he gave up the throne. She liked to vent about the duchess and i wanted her to as she was very frustrated at living 20 years in a nursing home. She rarely had unkind words to say about anyone. Canadians of her generation were very close to the British Royal family. I wonder if MAGA will be living in the MAGA of their minds 50 years after Trump. Will they hate the vaccine for the 100th covid variation? No doubt he gave them an inflection point (blame people, others, other than the oligarchs and movement conservatives for things you are suffering in finantial then emotional ways. Learn from the Proud Boys. Swallow the false narratives). I just hope we can inflect them back to reality some day.

August 23, 2023

GOP Prioritizes Cultural War Over National Security

GOP Prioritizes Cultural War Over National Security

August 23, 2023 at 10:19 am EDT By Taegan Goddard 88 Comments

https://politicalwire.com/2023/08/23/gop-prioritizes-cultural-war-over-national-security/

"SNIP.......

William Saletan: “The party of ‘national security’ is subordinating military readiness to snowflake cultural sensitivities. Specifically, Republicans are demanding that military personnel who refused orders to get vaccinated against COVID during the pandemic—and were discharged for their defiance—should be reinstated with back pay.”

“At the same time, many of these politicians are calling for a ban on transgender service members. They’re pretending that the ‘woke mind virus’ is a threat to military preparedness, but an actual virus isn’t. These Republicans aren’t serious about preparing for a real war. To them, the armed forces are just another battleground in the culture war.”

.........SNIP"

Applegrove:

Both these policies will result in more death. GOP doesn't need soldiers or workers now that it has AI and drones. Useless people have to go. Persecuting lgbtq and not vaxxing military will hurt.

August 13, 2023

Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires Aug. 12, 2023

Jamelle Bouie
OPINION
Why an Unremarkable Racist Enjoyed the Backing of Billionaires
Aug. 12, 2023

By Jamelle Bouie, Opinion Columnist

You’re reading the Jamelle Bouie newsletter, for Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/08/12/opinion/richard-hanania-eugenics-billionaires.html

"SNIP.........

If some groups are simply meant to be at the bottom, then there are no questions to ask about their deprivation, isolation and poverty. There are no questions to ask about the society which produces that deprivation, isolation and poverty. And there is nothing to be done, because nothing can be done: Those people are just the way they are.

If some groups — and really, if some individuals — are simply meant to be at the top, then there are no questions to ask about their wealth, status and power. And as my friend John Ganz notes in his newsletter, the idea of race hierarchy “creates the illusion of cross-class solidarity between these masters of infinite wealth and their propagandist and supporter class: ‘We are of the same special breed, you and I.’” Relations of domination between groups are reproduced as relations of domination between individuals.

This, in fact, has been the traditional role of supremacist ideologies in the United States — to occlude class relations and convert anxiety over survival into the jealous protection of status. The purveyors of supremacist ideologies have worked in concrete ways to bound the two things, survival and status, together; to create the illusion that the security, even prosperity, of one group rests on the exclusion of another. (The history of segregated housing in this country is testament enough to the success of that ideological project.) With enough time to grow and take root, these ideologies branch out with a life and logic of their own, reproduced by people who believe they have something new, novel and forbidden.

Why are billionaires backing an unremarkable racist as he tries to find a place in polite society? Because his interest in a hierarchical society built on racism serves their interest in a hierarchical society built on class — and ruled by capital.

.........SNIP"

August 11, 2023

We used to play capture the flag as kids at the cottage. You divided the territory into two.

We used to play capture the flag as kids at the cottage. You divided the territory into two (in our case the property lines of two woodsy cottages on a hill that leads down to the water). You have a jail (marked out on the ground) where you put the invaders to your property when you catch them on your property. Being in jail on my parents property mean you got to eat freshly picked carrots from the garden. In jail at my cousins meant you got to watch and hear Chippy the chipunk torture and tease Ben the dog.

The rule is that there needs to be a "flag" hidden somewhere where at least part of it, maybe an inch, can be seen from the jail. You win when you find the flag on the other team's property, grab it and run it back to your property without getting caught. If you get caught you go back to jail and the flag (a plastic bread bag with orange markings in our case because my mom saved bags in the 1970s, so we could always find two alike in her recycling), goes back to its hiding place.

There were paths between the two cottages: the dirt road, the shared driveways, the path through the woods (the shortest route), the path along the water and then the lake itself. And then there was all the woods in between that you could not run through but sneak, stealthily, so not to be seen (or heard) by the other team whose property you were on.

There was a prison guard because if you made it as far into the other property as the jail, and touched your teammates in jail without being touched by the guard first, you and they were free. And you'd keep one free person in the jail while your team searched for the flag, or got caught by the guard or opposite team member, and brought to jail where you got free again.

We ran, swam, snuck and scraped our feet running through the woods or other frontier chasing each other. We took boats, snorkeled, crawled through the underbrush and sprinted down the road only to sneak in the other's property from behind. Sometimes simply freezing in the woods was a tactic to not be seen. Your job in prison, free or not, was to scour the woods to find that one inch of orange that was the hidden flag be it buried in mud up the hill or halfway up a sapling, or 50 feet away in a bush.

Then one day someone got strategic and said "let's not wait to get caught; let's free the jail as a first move". So we lined up on all 5 paths and when the game began (we on the one team with a plot) and all stormed the other teams jail all at once freeing it as step one. Then the freed would run around looking for the flag. This became the norm. The game went from from being individual attempts and journeys', to both teams lining up along the paths and running by each other at the start of the game. You would surround the jail like a swarm of bees looking for the flag. Even guarding was given up on. Both teams were on offense. The game got much shorter. We soon outgrew the game.

This is what the GOP is doing. They flood the US with so many flawed, mean, lying, syncopatic and personality disordered candidates and outrages that they cannot all be dealt with, the guardrails come down and politics is not about leadership or ideas anymore. A completely different set of skills and norms are being used. Don't give up the guardrails no matter how many loons are running and making noise and slurring others. Nail everyone. Hold everyone accountable. Don't get cynical. Be shocked every time. Don't give into the system of the GOP-Federalist Society-ALEC-Fox. Lead. Dream.

Human created systems have in the past destroyed civilizations if not genocided others and the GOP seem on par with that what with their denial of climate change and their embrace of a die off. I'd rather keep some paleo ingenuity/individuality and be able to see the group delusions for what they are, than follow a novel human created system that changes who we all are. Democracy was a system that worked, slow for some kiinds of justice, but has been tested for two centuries. Mesolitic people invented farming and hierarchy. The language of modern day man created personal politics, subjective reasoning, and group think in the modern age as well a trips into unreality and created human constructs. Don't forget the humanity before that, it is still within you or follow someone who still has the paleolithic side, where a tree is a tree and they see the forest for that tree too.

Begs the question how far are we as a people going to pursue corporate efficiency at the cost of people just living their best lives.

August 11, 2023

GOP Candidate Plagiarized Massive Segments of His College Thesis

GOP Candidate Plagiarized Massive Segments of His College Thesis
MAGA CUM LAUDE
Roger Sollenberger
Senior Political Reporter
Updated Aug. 10, 2023 4:17PM EDT Published Aug. 10, 2023 4:46AM EDT

https://www.thedailybeast.com/gop-candidate-anthony-sabatini-plagiarized-massive-segments-of-his-college-thesis?ref=home?ref=home

"SNIP..........

Right-wing Florida Republican congressional candidate Anthony Sabatini is not afraid to trumpet his resume, including his undergraduate degree from the University of Florida, where—according to his LinkedIn, Legistorm, Wikipedia, law firm, and Timeshare Information Center bios—he graduated with honors, magna cum laude.

But Sabatini’s honors thesis—a 2012 treatise on the political legacy of German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, titled “A Profound Logic of The Blood”—is wildly plagiarized.

The Daily Beast’s review of the paper found that Sabatini lifted an astonishing amount of content verbatim from other sources. Worse, Sabatini—who double-majored in history and philosophy before being admitted to law school, also at the University of Florida—frequently pulls his passages from Wikipedia, and presents them without the required quotation marks or any clear attribution whatsoever.

.......SNIP"

August 8, 2023

The right-wing Barbie meltdown shows how reactionary forces are losing the culture wars

The right-wing Barbie meltdown shows how reactionary forces are losing the culture wars

Ben Shapiro: “Get ready, folks. It’s going to be liberated Barbie time."

Special PROGRAMS
LGBTQ

WRITTEN BY MADELINE PELTZ

RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS FROM JACINA HOLLINS-BORGES & SOPHIE LAWTON

PUBLISHED 07/18/23 2:04 PM ED
CitationAndrea Austria / Media Matters

https://www.mediamatters.org/charlie-kirk/right-wing-barbie-meltdown-shows-how-reactionary-forces-are-losing-culture-wars

"SNIP........

The Barbie movie is scheduled to be released on July 21; as it stands, there is no evidence that anti-trans attacks by right-wing influencers have resonated with audiences at all. (Barbie is distributed by Warner Bros. Movies, which is currently being struck by the Writers Guild of America and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.)

.............

“People say, ‘Well, what’s the story of Barbie?’” Gerwig recalls. “The story of Barbie is the fight that’s been going on about Barbie.”

In keeping with recent anti-LGBTQ extremist campaigns, right-wing media personalities have now imposed their anti-trans agenda onto that fight. They certainly have the muscle memory for ideologically wrestling with toys: Great battles in the conservative culture war have been waged over Mr. Potato Head, Legos, Xbox, Muppets, and more.

Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk, The Daily Wire’s Ben Shapiro, Fox host Rachel Campos-Duffy, and the gambit of right-wing blogs are outraged that Hari Nef, a transgender model and actor, stars in the movie as Doctor Barbie. (There are more than a dozen characters named Barbie in the movie, per IMDb, and an audio clip of each Barbie greeting each other by the same name has gone viral on TikTok.) This is not the first time Mattel has celebrated transgender representation through the Barbie brand: In 2022, the company released a doll version of Emmy-nominated actress Laverne Cox.

........SNIP"

Applegrove:

I think another reason why the GOP is anti Barbie is because (spoiler alert)

.
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.
.
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.
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Ken is encouraged to find himself and plans to. Nothing more threatening to a cult than followers who self actualize.

August 8, 2023

They are afraid of men getting to know themselves. Fascism requires sublimating

the self. Self actualized men make bad cultists. Why scientology attacks psychology and psychiatry. Why the GOP is afraid of Barbie. Why GOP doesn't want men living for their own journey and their relationship with themselves, the only want men to have a relationship people with white nationalism, or guns, or evangelical Christianity or any of the other roles the GOP deems correct for a man to have that will give the GOP power.

August 7, 2023

Grilled tomato sandwiches. You make them the same way as grilled

cheese sandwiches except you put thick sliced tomato, mayo and s&p instead of cheese.

August 2, 2023

Pierre Poilievre, who wants to kill the CBC (Canadas's BBC),

https://www.threads.net/@pierrepoilievremp/post/Cva-iAFgKZA/?igshid=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==

barking out bullsh*t again.

On Meta banning Canadian news from its social media because the government wants Canadian news sources see some profit from all the sharing online. Meta refused. They have already struck a deal with Australian media. Now Poilievre says:

"SNIP........

It gets more and more surreal.

A government law is making news disappear from the internet.

When Trudeau said he admired “China’s basic dictatorship,” he meant it.

I will give people back control of their speech & lives in the freest nation on earth.

........SNIP"

Applegrove: Hey Poilievre a healthy free press is the bedrock of free speech and freedom. Why don't you want a healthy free press in Canada? I bet he has been waiting to use that Trudeau China faux pas for ages.

August 1, 2023

The MAGA base was crushed by trickle down for 30 years so they

have no stake in the Democracy. Used to be you had a union job and could dream about retiring to a fishing cabin part of the year. Or you had money in the stock market. Trickle own ended that dream. They felt not a part of America. Not part of the dream. GOP did that and thought they could inspire people with racism and other wedge issues. Then Trump came along. In its weakened state some of the USA's public felll for it. All they had left were feelings of resentment and a desire to be connected to something greater than themselves...... "Again".